Tag: immigration

Kill

On Friday President Trump announced that: “Any document signed by Sleepy Joe Biden with the Autopen, which was approximately 92% of them, is hereby terminated, and of no further force or effect….” https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/115629010097815862

Rather than evaluating each Presidential order and rescinding those that are inconsistent with Trump’s policy objectives (whatever those might be), Trump rescinds them all if not signed personally by former President Biden.

This reflects Trumps use of his position to attack anyone who disagrees with him—his enemies. Rather than explaining why a policy is bad, Trump simply condemns the work of his “enemies.”

When six democratic congressmen posted a video reminding solders of their legal obligation to refuse to execute illegal orders, Trump exploded.  “The president said lawmakers who appeared in a video committed “seditious behavior” and should be arrested and put on trial for treason.” https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/11/20/trump-democrats-seditious-behavior/

A prime example of such an illegal order was Secretary Hegseth’s order to bomb boats in the Caribbean he thought were bringing illegal drugs to the US and to kill all aboard. “Hegseth order on first Caribbean boat strike, officials say: Kill them all” https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2025/11/28/hegseth-kill-them-all-survivors-boat-strike/

Hegseth’s order was illegal under both US and international law. SEAL Team 6, which committed these murders, executed an illegal order, thus violating their pledge to uphold the constitution.

President Trump also violated the law by directing the Justice Department to pursue those who criticize him—his enemies. From universities and law firms to former FBI head James Comey, and former national security advisor John Bolton, Trump has threatened to withhold Federal funds from universities that do not bow to his demands or try his enemies for one thing or other. Bolton’s crime is the same as Donald Trump’s – the improper handling of secret government documents. And of course, anything Biden did is condemned as the cause of anything wrong.

Trump’s masked ICE teams arresting and deported supposedly illegal immigrants has been a lawless disaster—occasionally arresting legal American citizen and embarrassing the whole effort to strengthen the enforcement of immigration rules.

Trump’s haphazard announcements of Tariffs, (hopefully) soon to be declared illegal by the Supreme Court, followed none of the rules of the World Trade Organization, which are designed to promote economic efficiency and thus maximize world incomes. They were deployed to bully individual countries to agree to whatever was in Trump’s interest, an interest rarely compatible with American interests.

I am all for downsizing the government, but on the basis of careful reviews of what functions are needed and desirable and the required staff to carry them out efficiently. Elon Musk’s led Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) took a chainsaw approach that led Trump appointed department heads to object.

This, of course, is not how a mature adult would govern in a constitutional republic. Trump and many of his appointees are not such people. Living together peacefully and productively requires civil discussion of issues and cooperation and compromise—not bullying.

Those breaking the law or issuing illegal orders should be removed from their positions and tried for the crimes they have committed.

Immigration

what is the problem and what should be done?

The United State—a nation of immigrants—is the most prosperous nation in the world because of the freedom of its residents to innovate, work hard, and seek out what the public wants to buy (i.e. to profit). Many of the founders of our most successful companies (e.g., Google, Tesla, Panda Express, Uber, WhatsApp, eBay, Stripe, PayPal) are first generation immigrants. Immigrants are drawn to America because it offers such opportunities, thus we tend to attract the best and brightest. “Immigrants from hell”

Along with the clear benefits of immigration, it poses challenges and some costs as well. The internal migration of people within a country as new jobs or tastes result in people moving into new homes and neighborhoods produces most all the same issues as immigration of foreigners from abroad. We live in communities and have rules (even laws) for our rights and those of our neighbors. What we do effects then and vice versa.

Before moving back to Crystal/Pentagon City in Arlington Virginia, we lived in a 64 home (two acres each) community in Bethesda Maryland with a convenient reflecting very ridged rules for what we could and could not do on our property in order to preserve its natural wooded environment. This is what we were buying. But over some decades more and more families with children moved in with different tastes and desires (e.g., basketball hoops visible from the road). Many community discussions were held, and some rules were adjusted but it required a lot of community discussion.

Our immigration laws are inadequate. We need more immigrant workers and entrepreneurs and better border control, i.e., we need more legal immigration and better control of the illegal sort.  Laws to give immigrants legal status are inadequate and not consistently enforced. “illegal aliens” In 2013 a bipartisan bill to address these problems (The Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act of 2013) passed the Senate by 68-32 in favor but sadly failed to pass the House. Quoting from Wikipedia:

“If enacted, the bill would have made it possible for many undocumented immigrants to gain legal status and eventually citizenship. It would have increased border security by adding up to 40,000 border patrol agents. It also would have advanced talent-based immigration through a points-based immigration system. New visas were proposed in this legislation, including a visa for entrepreneurs and a W visa for lower skilled workers.[6] It also proposed new restrictions on H1B visa program to prevent its abuse and additional visas/green-cards for students with science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) degrees from U.S. institutions. The bill also included a $1.5 billion youth jobs program and repealed the Diversity Visa Lottery in favor of prospective legal immigrants who are already in the United States.”

Refugees pose a special challenge (e.g. Afghans who worked for the US or international bodies and are thus suspect to the new Taliban government) as do the “guest” seasonal workers in California’s farmland. If Congress is up for serious work they should get to it.

“Data” – Flawed but see it anyway

Ito and I saw the play “Data” at Arena Stage last Tuesday. The Washington Post review was titled “This play is a flawed look at AI. You should see it anyway.”  “Data-Arena Stage review”  We agree. The production and acting were outstanding. But the story fell short in a number of ways.

Skipping all the personal mysteries that were inadequately explained, the play suggests that turning the screening of immigration applications (not asylum applications) over to a computer (AI) program would be bad. Whatever biases (criteria) are wanted for US immigration policy can be built into the screening program, of course, but if they are not the criteria America wants to apply, AI is a safer way of avoiding them than the judgement of individual immigration officers.

In requesting bids from programmers to develop the AI screening program, the play states that the government’s objective to sort out those applicants for residency (and ultimately citizenship) is to approve those who would be “positive and productive.”  If the criteria for finding such people can be identified for immigration officers (no easy task), they can be built into an AI program, which can be relied on to more faithfully and consistently apply them than any human officers. The boss in the play correctly noted that such a program could produce an answer in seconds that  took the US immigration service three years to achieve in his case coming from China.

Of course, AI is not perfect and can make mistakes just as humans can. But their accuracy is improving with training and use at a rapid rate. Tesla’s Full Self Driving cars have been linked to 956 accidents with 29 deaths. But this is already dramatically safer than the much higher death rates per million miles driven of car accidents by humans.

Training AI programs will draw on a much wider set of information than is now used for immigration applications. Anything on the Internet related to the applicant might be collected and evaluated by an AI program. How should such information be used? This opens new concerns that will need to be evaluated, but the promise of faster and better application processing from the use of AI promises much more benefits than risks compared to our current reliance on human immigration officers.

“Data” does a poor job of exploring these important issues, but it is worth watching anyway.

Immigration and smuggling

America has a labor shortage. We need to widen the door to legal immigration and patrol our borders against illegal immigration and drug smuggling more effectively. The Biden administration has requested several billion dollars for that purpose and Congress should approve it. But how should it be paid for. “Congress funding of border control”

Every person and every country’s resources are limited. Their use for one thing means that they are not available to be used for something else. Budgets reflect our choices—our priorities. Increasing our border security would save tens of thousands of lives a year from reduced drug smuggling alone.

I suggest that we close our military bases in Europe and apply the money saved to increased border security and deficit reduction (sadly it would not be enough to reduce our debt only the deficit –i.e., the annual increase in debt). Our European bases cost $24.4 billion in 2018 (the latest figure I could find and with our support for the war in Ukraine it could only have increased). Our EU basses save no lives and add nothing to our security. They largely reduce the incentive for EU countries to provide for their own defense. But our immigration policy and border controls are a mess and should be improved.

A land of Immigrants

Ken Burns’ latest documentary (with his co-directors Lynn Novick and Sarah Botstein), “The U.S. and the Holocaust” is a well-timed reminder of Americans mixed views on immigration. As we all know, aside from the native Americans living here when Europeans began arriving, all of us, or our ancestors, are immigrants. But once here, many Americans decided that was enough and further immigration should be significantly curtailed.

The Burns’ documentary also reminds us of immigration seen from the perspective of those wanting to come.  Before the fall of the Berlin Wall, some of us will remember cheering as East Germans escaped from East Berlin in the German Democratic Republic (DDR). We were happy to see them escape their communist oppressors, but some were less happy to see them arrive in their own countries. But logically, if someone leaves one country, they must enter another. “Emigration and Immigration”

Immigrants fall into two broad categories: those fleeing persecution or mistreatment and those seeking better opportunities in new countries (America’s promised land). Some combine both motives. Not all asylum seekers desire to move to wealthier lands. Many Jews fleeing Germany hoped to return to their homeland after the era of Hitler. They chose to move temporarily to nearby countries such as the Netherlands, France, Poland, and Belgium. Otto Frank of the “Diary of Ann Frank” fame moved his family to Amsterdam.

“The U.S. foreign-born population reached a record 44.8 million in 2018.  Since 1965, when U.S. immigration laws replaced a national quota system, the number of immigrants living in the U.S. has more than quadrupled. Today those born abroad account for 13.7% of the U.S. population, nearly triple the share (4.8%) in 1970. However, today’s immigrant share remains below the record 14.8% share in 1890, when 9.2 million immigrants lived in the U.S…. More than 1 million immigrants now arrive in the U.S. each year….  New immigrant arrivals have fallen, mainly due to a decrease in the number of unauthorized immigrants coming to the U.S. The drop in the unauthorized immigrant population can primarily be attributed to more Mexican immigrants leaving the U.S. than coming in.” “Key findings about U.S. immigrants”

The American economy and the standard of living of the average household have benefited enormously from immigration. Those seeking better opportunities are disproportionately the best and the brightest from their home countries. The founders and heads of some of our best fintec companies were born abroad.  In fact, surprisingly, population growth in general in countries with free markets, property rights and rule of law has increased the standard of living enormously for almost everyone. From the emergence of humans individual living standards barely changed. The advent of agriculture 10,000 years ago created a small improvement. That changed with discovery of the “new world” and related expansion of trade 530 years ago and accelerated with the Enlightenment and the industrial revolution just 350 years ago. In the last 60 years per capita real incomes increased 2,414% in Ireland and 232% in Mexico (the least growth of those countries for which there was data). Over the last 40 years alone per capita real income in China doubled every 7.1 years. Between 1900 – 2018 the average real income of unskilled workers in the U.S. increased 1,473%. These and other amazing data can be found in “Superabundance” and extraordinary collection of very interesting income and resource data.

Accepting refugees has a different purpose and motivation. We accept immigrants for our benefit and we accept refugees for their benefit. Countries have an obligation to provide asylum to anyone who arrives at their territory with reason to fear persecution under the convention’s criteria. Ken Burns Holocaust documentary confronts us graphically with why this is necessary.   “Asylum in the United States”

Asylum seekers are a small fraction of total immigration each year. In FY 2019, the most recent pre-pandemic year with available data, 46,508 individuals were granted asylum.  Most immigrants entering the U.S. each year are joining family already here or looking for better opportunities (better lives).  As noted above they invariably contribute to raising incomes of those of us already here.  

There are many problems with our immigration rules and their administration. Congress has tried for decades to address them without success. But the recent political stunts by the governors of Texas and Florida reflect America at its ugliest.

“The group of 50 migrants flown to Martha’s Vineyard, Mass., by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) last week had nearly all recently arrived from Venezuela. Another group of 100 dropped outside the vice president’s Washington, D.C., residence this weekend also included those fleeing the country. And buses sent to Chicago by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) largely included Venezuelans. 

“The U.S. in recent weeks has seen an even greater shift in migration from Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua.”  “GOP stunts with migrants sweep up those fleeing regimes they denounce”

Governor DeSantis and Abbott where not helping these refugees await their court hearings in greater comfort. They did not alert the authorities in Martha’s Vineyard, Chicago, or DC to prepare for their arrival. Their purpose was to share the burden with (and punish) “sanctuary cities”. Their purpose was to make a political statement using the refugees as innocent pawns.

A “suit was filed in federal court in Massachusetts. It takes aim at DeSantis, Florida Secretary of Transportation Jared Perdue and the state of Florida.

“The core of the case is the allegation that the migrants were coaxed onto the flights by false promises — “fraudulent inducement” in legal terms — and that this means DeSantis and his allies infringed those migrants’ rights and committed fraud.

“It asserts that migrants were approached outside a shelter in San Antonio by mysterious people who won their trust by supplying them with minimal benefits such as McDonald’s vouchers.”   “What you need to know about the complex legal challenges to DeSantis’s migrant flights”

Nunca from Texas provides important information on who these refugees are and understanding those facts is important: 

“I volunteer as a translator with asylees coming through the Texas border and I wanted to make a thread on who these migrants are, what help is actually needed and why what DeSantis and Abbott are doing is so needlessly cruel….

“The first and most important thing you should understand, these are LEGAL asylum seekers. They are not illegals. They are not undocumented.

“They have been given permission by our government to enter the US pending their official court date. The law ONLY requires that asylum seekers be present on US soil and that they present themselves to officials to request asylum.  That is it.

“Anyone who calls them illegal immigrants is really telling on themselves and deliberately trying to confuse the issue. 

“Once they present themselves to border officials, they are processed and then given a court date to officially plead their case.  This court date is almost always a year away and in a major city far from the border, like Boston, NY, Miami, Chicago, etc. 

“You can always spot the asylum seekers coming out of detention facilities because they don’t have shoelaces (story for another day) and they have court papers in one hand.

“Another thing I would note, the Biden admin is STILL immediately deporting the vast majority of asylees. The folks that make it through come from the most harrowing conditions you can imagine. I have met whole families who had to flee El Salvador on foot because gangs threatened to kill them if their son did not join.

“I met a man who was attacked by police for leading a protest. In almost every case, these are smart, hard working CHRISTIAN refugees. Their ability to assimilate into America and thrive is limitless. They love America. They just want a chance to live and thrive in peace. 

“WHAT HELP DO THEY NEED?

“Because these groups already have court dates and in almost every case, they have family they can stay with, they only really need two things: short term food and shelter and transportation. And I mean short term. Usually less than 12 hours. 

“In most cases, these asylees only need help getting to the bus station and maybe a bite to eat while they wait. Sometimes they need to stay overnight until the next bus leaves and sometimes they need help buying a ticket, though family usually buys the ticket for them. 

Border towns and local non profits have been dealing with this for 4 years. This did not start with Biden. It was actually worse under Trump.

“But these areas already know what to do with these transient asylees and they already have the resource networks in place to manage them. In most cases, an asylee will leave detention and organizations like Catholic Charities are right there to greet them and figure out if they can go straight to the bus station or if they need temporary shelter. Local municipalities & non profits here have gotten real good at it 

“WHY IS “BUSSING” ASYLEES AROUND THE COUNTRY SO BAD?

“Initially, I didn’t complain too much about Abbott’s decision to bus immigrants because it actually helped them. It gave them a free ticket to get closer to family. And they weren’t being forced to go.

“But…. The problem with Abbott’s approach is that they are often lying to the migrants about where they are going and what will be waiting for them. And even worse, when they get to NY or DC, Abbott is deliberately choosing to drop them off far away from the resources they need.  Abbott could easily notify DC that they are coming and then he could drop the migrants off right at the doorstep of the bus station or non-profit ready to greet them. It would cost him nothing.

“But he is choosing to dump them where it harms the City and migrants the most. 

By dumping them in front of the VPs house, like he did this week, now local officials have to figure out, without any notice, how to get 50 people in the heart of the City out to where the resources are ready to receive them. 

“And what DeSantis did yesterday takes it up another notch. He deliberately lied to immigrants in Texas who were already being managed by non-profits and shipped them into MV where no one was ready to help them. It was deliberately cruel and created to maximize pain. 

“Credit to the people of Martha’s Vineyard who stepped up in a huge way and responded. They did exactly what they were supposed to: they took care of their immediate needs and helped them get on their way. What folks here in Texas have been doing for years. 

“If Abbott and DeSantis actually cared about helping relieve the burden created by asylum seekers, they could just as easily and far more cost-effectively funnel the millions they are spending on their cynical stunt and give it to the non profits already doing the job. 

“Do asylees create a burden on border communities? Sure. But it is a burden we have already learned how to manage and the only thing we really need is more resources. It would be far more effective to just buy migrants a sandwich and a bus ticket than a private plane to MV. This is the kind of deliberate misinformation Conservatives are being fed.

“These migrants SHOULDN’T stay in MV because they have family and court dates in other places. They were TRICKED into being there.”

***********  

In an interview with the Washington Post about his new documentary, Ken Burns said:  I made a comment about the [Florida Gov. Ron] DeSantis play in Martha’s Vineyard as being a kind of an authoritarian response, just as it was when Disney says we don’t agree with you, he punishes them. When a state employee doesn’t do what he says, he fires them. That’s the authoritarian thing. It’s not the democratic way that you handle it. But the right-wing media has said that I’ve equated what DeSantis did with the Holocaust, which is obscene. I mean, literally obscene to do that. But it is also classic authoritarian playbook to sort of lie about what somebody just said in order to make it so outrageous that then you can deny the complexity of what’s being presented.”  “Ken Burns holocaust documentary”

What DeSantis and Abbott are guilty of is fraud. They lied to those sent to Martha’s Vineyard and Washington DC about where they were being sent and what they would receive when they got there. Fortunately, most of us still believe in the rule of law where fraud is punished.

“’The Republicans are so quick to bash the Venezuelan government and to say, ‘But we love the Venezuelans.’ And then the minute that vulnerable populations from Venezuela arrive in our country, they then use them as political pawns. It’s really beyond reprehensible. It’s a really repugnant motivation,’ Rep. Veronica Escobar (D-Texas) told The Hill.”   “GOP stunts with migrants sweep up those fleeing regimes they denounce”

“Lawyers for Civil Rights (LCR), a Boston-based legal advocacy group, filed the lawsuit on Tuesday challenging what it called the “fraudulent and discriminatory” scheme to charter private planes to transport almost 50 vulnerable people, including children as young as two, from San Antonio, Texas, via Florida, to Martha’s Vineyard last week without liaising to arrange shelter and other resources.

“The two charter flights cost about $615,000 – $12,300 per person – of taxpayers’ money, according to the legal filing….

“’This cowardly political stunt has placed our clients in peril. Numerous laws were brazenly violated to secure media headlines,’ said Oren Sellstrom, litigation director for LRC.” “Martha’s Vineyard immigration lawsuit”

Immigration is a very complicated and fluid issue and what I have pointed out above is just one part of many parts of the problem. Racial and religious discrimination is another avenue of contention in the immigration debate. One wonders whether deSantis (or anyone opposed to immigration in general) would behave differently if these asylum seekers where of a different color and from a different country. My Afghan friends unable to escape from Kabul look enviously at the Western welcome of Ukrainian refugees. But that’s a discussion for another article.

May justice be done.  “Immigrants from hell”

Facebook and Immigration

December 3rs’s WSJ started an article on immigration as follows:

“The Trump administration has sued Facebook Inc., accusing the social-media company of illegally reserving high-paying jobs for immigrant workers it was sponsoring for permanent residence, rather than searching adequately for available U.S. workers who could fill the positions.

The lawsuit reflects a continuing Trump administration push to crack down on alleged displacement of American workers.”  “Trump administration claims Facebook improperly reserved jobs for H1-b workers”

Immigration policy is a complex issue with many aspects. The economic aspects, however, should be straight forward and simple. https://wcoats.blog/2018/03/03/econ-101-trade-in-very-simple-terms/  https://wcoats.blog/2018/03/24/econ-101-trade-deficits-another-bite/  https://wcoats.blog/2018/09/28/trade-protection-and-corruption/ A free market in goods and labor increases productivity and output making the world wealthier. The cost for this extraordinary benefit is that some firms may go out of business and some workers may lose their existing jobs when someone else does better what the firm or worker were doing. They will need to move on to other activities or jobs.  It is wise and appropriate social policy to help those displaced by competition find alternative uses of their resources and skills.

It might seem rather harmless to protect existing firms and jobs from competition (aside from its afront to our individual freedom) but overtime the cost in reduced income growth will become greater and greater. What if such policies had been imposed a hundred years ago? Where would we be now?

If there are American workers who can perform the same job for the same wage Facebook needs, it has every financial incentive to hire them over sponsoring foreign workers. They don’t need laws to push them to do so. The good old profit incentive works just fine. It is fortunate that the exercise of our individual freedom to invent, invest, and work where we please also produces the most efficient (i.e. productive, thus profitable) use of our talents and resources. Talk about win-win. Those displaced when I come up with a better idea (i.e., something the rest of you like better) should be discouraged from stopping such progress with an effective economic safety net. “Replacing Social Security with a Universal Basic Income”

Saving the American Dream

The American Dream is under attack.

“The American Dream is the belief that anyone, regardless of where they were born or what class they were born into, can attain their own version of success in a society where upward mobility is possible for everyone. The American Dream is achieved through sacrifice, risk-taking, and hard work….” “The American Dream is to succeed by work, rather than by birth”. The Dream has attracted the world’s best and brightest to our shores making America the world’s leading economic powerhouse and enabling us to live freely as we each determine what we are willing to work for, for ourselves and our families.

Historically, individuals have been limited in what they could achieve by where they were born in society, by their parent’s position in life, and by who they knew. Companies of individuals were limited by the restrictions placed on them by their governments, often by the protections from competition government granted their friends (crony capitalism). Such traditional societies limited the freedom and ambitions of its citizens and limited the productivity of its human and physical resources. In short, traditional societies were keep poorer than they would have been if their citizens had been freer to innovate and compete.

The American Dream is now under attack by Donald Trump’s trade protectionism, crony capitalist government favoritism, immigration walls, and weakening of the international rule of law that has extended the benefits of specialization and trade globally. It is also being attacked by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s (LOC’s) vision of state leadership and control of production and a new generation of idealistic, but uninformed, voters who mean well but have missed the lessons of socialism’s failures. If we are to save the conditions in the United States in which the American Dream still lives, we must better understand what has led so many Americans to vote against it.

I am sure that the answers to that question are many and complex, but broadly speaking two stand out in my mind, both of which point to the measures needed to restore support for the dream.

The first is to better educate the public, especially its younger members, about the conditions that allow and encourage a productive, innovative economy. This includes understanding the proper role of government in protecting private property, enforcing contracts, maintaining public safety (the rule of law) and in providing the public infrastructure that facilitates private activities and commerce (the commons of public goods). It includes the lessons of why all socialist economies have failed as a result of the corrupting incentives of state direction of economic activity rather than the competitive search by profit seeking private enterprises for better ways to serve the public.

The second answer concerns the adequacy and efficiency of our social safety net. The American Dream concerns individuals who take responsibility for their own well-being. While on average this has opened the way for most to prosper to the extent of their talents and energy, some will, often through no fault of their own, fail and fall off the tightrope. Society has an interest (even beyond the obvious humanitarian one) in softening the fall. It has an interest in an effective social safety net. 

Some–those who have not understood the lessons of socialism’s failures–have looked to trade and immigration restriction to prevent them from losing their jobs. They object to the economic benefits of free trade when it means that they must look for a new job (however, most manufacturing job losses in the U.S. have resulted from technical progress and the resulting increase in productivity rather than from cross border trade). “Econ-101-trade-in-very-simple-terms”  “Trade-protection-and-corruption” Those with such views have supported Trump’s anti free market policies. They have been attracted by Trump’s “I win you lose, us vs them” rhetoric.

AOC and her friends point to the widening income inequality–the dramatic increase in the incomes of the wealthiest and the stagnation of the incomes of the middle class in recent years–and demand income redistribution. But she fails to understand that it has been the growth of government’s role in the economy and the incentives in big government toward corruption and crony capitalism (protectionism for the wealthy) that have reduced competition and protected the position and markets of the biggest companies with friends in government. Socialism would make those incentives even stronger.

America’s dynamism and success reflects the creative destruction of risk-taking entrepreneurs and their hard-working employees.  https://economics.mit.edu/files/1785  However, the workers whose jobs are displaced by new products and new technologies may need help in finding and retraining for new jobs. They may need financial assistance in between (unemployment insurance). If nothing else, this may be the cost of their support for such a dynamic system.  Our social safety net sometimes provides poor incentives and sometimes has holes. It is time to seriously consider replacing it with a less intrusive and more comprehensive Universal Basic Income.  “Our-social-safety-net”  “Replacing-Social-Security-with-a-Universal-Basic-Income”

The American Dream–the foundation of our freedom and affluence–is under attack from the left and the right. We should fight to preserve (or restore) it.

Where does the desire to explore come from?

Long ago I had the pleasure of introducing a young friend to types of food he hadn’t tasted before.  He was quite comfortable with his American style hot dog and hamburger meals and wasn’t certain he wanted to try new and strange dishes.  People differ in this regard.  Some are eager to try new cuisine, see new places, and encounter new people and cultures. Some are not.  And some are even rather intimidated and reluctant to leave their familiar comfort zone. There is a lot to be said for the predictability of the familiar, perhaps similar to well-worn shoes.

After some gentle persuasion, my friend agreed to sample a few dishes.  I reassured him that nothing would be forced on him and that he might even discover some exciting new tastes.  If he found that he didn’t like a dish he would not have to finish it.  But he would never know what he might be missing if he didn’t explore a bit.  Once he started, however, it was hard to stop him.  He was pleasantly surprised at how interesting and tasty some dishes were.  He was particularly reluctant to try foie gras knowing it was goose liver, though he fell in love with it by the second bite.

As I noted earlier, people differ in their tastes for adventure.  We might just leave it at that but for two reasons.  The first is that being rich is more interesting and exciting than being poor.  I am speaking here of experience rather than money.  Seeing and engaging new and different places, meeting new and different people of different cultures, listening to new and different music can make life richer.  The core of a liberal arts education (as opposed to acquiring professional skills) is the introduction to and broadening of our understanding and appreciation of ours and other cultures. It makes our lives richer.

The second is that openness to change is a necessary aspect of economic progress.  Technical progress disrupts the established order but increases our productivity and standards of living.  Global trade not only significantly increases our material standard of living but confronts us with other people and cultures as well.  Both–technical progress and global trade often impose changes on us (such as the job skills demanded in the market) that we might otherwise not choose or want.  If people can choose to live where their opportunities are greatest and if firms are able to employ people with the skills that best fit the firms needs, economies will be more efficient and will raise the standard of living for everyone.  By allowing the disruption of innovation and trade we will have the opportunity to, or be forced to, confront and deal with strangers more often.

This can have a negative side for those who do not easily embrace adventure—those who prefer the familiar (hot dogs and hamburgers). If new neighbors come from different backgrounds and cultures, adventure lovers can enjoy the excitement of learning more about other places and people.  But those uncomfortable with strangers can be – well – uncomfortable.  Economic advances can also have negative impacts on those whose skills are no longer needed and we would be wise to develop and support government measures to soften and facilitate the needed adjustments.

A predisposition to seek and embrace adventures or to shun them is given to us by nature. However, civilization and its advance builds on nurturing more social skills and openness. Failure to teach/convince our fellow citizens of the rewards of adventure (or merely accepting and adjusting to change) can lead to disastrous results.  In extreme cases unease can turn to fear/hate as in the recent white nationalist terrorist attack in El Paso by Patrick Crusius.  As-his-environment-changed-suspect-in-el-paso-shooting-learned-to-hate.  The nature of public debate on race relations, religious freedom, globalization, etc., and the words of role models can have a profound impact on how those confronting change formulate their views on these subjects.

The world is a better, richer place when all of its people respect one another and live peaceably together. We and our education systems (school, churches, clubs, jobs) should do our best to encourage those reluctant to welcome strangers of the positive experiences it can open to them.  By learning to understand different ways of thinking and doing, we not only enrich our lives but can strengthen our own ways of doing things (our own cultures). Such interactions can show us what we like and value about our own ways and what we might adjust in light of the interesting practices of others. This is what the American melting pot is all about. It has produced a vibrant, dynamic and economically flourishing country. However, it is more friendly to the adventuresome types than to those resistant to change. We would do ourselves and our country a favor to kindly encourage those “left behind” to open up more to the wonders of our changing world.  With regard to a difference subject of misinformation Anne Applebaum explores multiple approaches to this task: Italians-decided-to-fight-a-conspiracy-theory-heres-what-happened-next?

 

The Wall: Form or Substance?

Most Americans support legal immigration into the United States (preferably more and better targeted than now) and oppose illegal entry. Controversy has arisen over how best to limit the illegal sort (to say the least).

The border between the U.S. and Mexico runs almost 2 thousand miles. By 2009 580 miles of fence or wall had been built for the purpose of reducing illegal entry of people and drugs. This grew to 654 miles by 2017.  Leaving aside the many controversies over the environmental impacts of fencing a border that runs through Indian reservations, and environmentally sensitive areas (“In April 2008, the Department of Homeland Security announced plans to waive more than 30 environmental and cultural laws to speed construction of the barrier.” Wikipedia), we must ask whether a fence/wall on even half of the border will significantly reduce, much less stop, illegal entry into the U.S. and whether it is the most cost-effective way of doing so (electronic “fences” are also now being deployed). The Economist magazine estimated that it may have “reduced the number of Mexican citizens living in America by only 0.6%.” “The-big-beautiful-border-wall-America-built-ten-years-ago”  About half of all illegal emigrants arrived in the U.S. legally by boat or plane and overstayed their visas.

Where there is a will, there is a way. Illegal immigration is reduced when conditions (incomes and security) in a potential immigrant’s home country are improved, when legal channels of immigration widened, and when illegal entry and residence are made less attractive (riskier).

While the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which came into effect in 1994, benefited the United States, it improved living standards in Mexico and Canada as well, President Trump’s condemnations notwithstanding.  Over its first 20 years Mexican trade with the U.S. and Canada more than doubled. (Burfisher, Mary E; Robinson, Sherman; Thierfelder, Karen (2001-02-01). “The Impact of NAFTA on the United States”. Journal of Economic Perspectives. 15 (1):125 44.  CiteSeerX 10.1.1.516.6543. doi:10.1257/jep.15.1.125. ISSN 0895-3309.)  Per capita income (GPD) in Mexico increased 37% and in the U.S. 52% between 1993 and 2017.

An example of Trump’s misuse of data was provided by his statement during his recent State of the Union Address when he claimed that: “One in three women is sexually assaulted on the long journey north”, referring to the Mexican caravans to the U.S. border.  The data comes from the Doctors Without Borders, who reported that of the 57 women caravaners who sought their medical care one third “said they were “sexually abused” on the journey, not “sexually assaulted” as Trump says.” This is not even in the same ball park.  “Fact-checking-president-trumps-state-union-address”

On multiple occasions over the last 20 years sensible bipartisan immigration reform laws were proposed but never passed. We badly need to adopt some such reforms in order to meet the labor market needs of the U.S. economy and to settle the legal status of earlier illegal immigrants (including the Dreamers).  See my earlier comments on such reforms:  https://wcoats.blog/2017/02/12/illegal-aliens/  https://wcoats.blog/2018/01/11/our-dysfunctional-congress/

The most challenging component of the policies to reduce illegal immigration are policies to make illegal status as unattractive as possible. In short, a barrier to illegal status that immigrants can’t climb over, tunnel under, or walk around. Illegal status should be very unattractive. Illegal residence should not have access to any, other than emergency, welfare services. People generally immigrate to the U.S. in search of a better life. That generally means a better paying job than they could find at home.  Employers who hire undocumented workers should be heavily fined (especially if the employer happens to be the President of the United States).  Efforts to deny services and jobs to illegal immigrants should not intrude on the privacy and lives of legal residents however recently they might have arrived. Our conflicted approaches of overlooking illegal status, reflects our failure to have adopted sensible laws for legal immigration.

America is an attractive place to live and we have benefited greatly from the best and the brightest who have chosen to come here (legally).  For our own sake and for the sake of those who might come we need to improve the process and widen the door for legal immigration while making the illegal sort less attractive.

Immigrants from Hell

What immigration policies best serve the national interests of the United States?

Every country on the face of the earth has citizens whose intelligence, enterprise, and moral character range from 0 to 10. In poorly governed countries, we might call them “hell hole” countries, their best and brightest (the 8, 9, and 10s) often immigrate to more promising environments. The United States, with our constitution of liberty, has attracted a disproportionally large number of them. This is a dominant factor in the economic success of America and our spirit of individualism and enterprise. https://wcoats.blog/2010/06/10/a-nation-of-immigrants/

Just as individuals and companies compete in the market place to maximize the reward for their efforts (those who serve the public best, profit the most), so do the countries of which they are a part. When and if individuals and companies are given the chance to protect themselves from and restrict such competition they generally take it. Free (i.e. competitive) markets rarely offer such opportunities but governments often do. Governments claim to restrict competition to protect consumers or protect jobs from cheap foreign labor, etc. But more often than not government measures to interfere in the market are the result of political pressure to serve and protect special interests, what most of us would call corruption. Examples of government measures to protect companies or individuals from competition include: import tariffs, teachers’ unions that protect the jobs of bad teachers, excessive product safety standards that foreign competitors as well as domestic start-ups find hard to meet, and restrictive professional licensing through which medical doctors (to name just one profession) have limited who and what medical services can be provided.

The government’s regulation of who may immigrate temporarily or permanently is another area heavily influenced by individuals and companies seeking to protect themselves from competition. Subjecting American firms and workers to competition from foreign firms and workers (either from “cheap” foreign labor making it there and exporting to us, or immigrating and making it here), promotes long run economic growth.

Immigrants don’t take existing jobs from Americans; they create new jobs needed to pay for the consumption they add to the economy. While it is true that a firm can profit more with a monopoly by charging more by supplying less, the income of the nation as a whole suffers when supply is monopolized. Thus while worker and firm monopolies (e.g. the United Auto Workers, and uncompetitive steel manufacturers protected by import tariffs on potential competitors) will increase worker and firm incomes in the short run, the country would be poorer than otherwise in the long run. If we closed the border to trade all together, the country’s income would suffer considerably in the long run.

In this note I review a few immigration issues from the perspective of what policies best serve the national interest. By national interest I generally mean policies that best promote broadly shared economic growth. The self-selection of the best and brightest from around the world to immigrate to the U.S. in our earlier history clearly helped make us the prosperous nation that we are today. Our poorest citizens live better than the average citizen in many of the world’s poorer countries.

Attract the best and the brightest. To continue our past history of attracting the best and the brightest from around the world, our immigration policy should favor admitting the most talented and those with the work skills most needed. If we do not continue to attract and admit them they will go elsewhere boosting the economic fortunes of other (competitive) countries. “Immigration-is-practically-a-free-lunch-for-America”

Of the approximately one million foreigners given permanent residency each year about 70% are extended family members of existing permanent residents. These are the parents and grandparents and aunts and uncles of existing citizens or green card holders most of whom do not intent to work and/or do not have skills relevant to our labor markets. From a given total of immigrants the extended family preference crowds out workers. If we want to promote faster economic growth, we should pull the family preference back to the nuclear family (spouse and children) and keep or increase the total number of immigrants allowed each year thus increasing those coming to work.

Attract the best and the brightest. Similarly we should replace the existing green card lottery with merit based selection criteria (i.e. with H-1B visas, which are currently limited to 85,000 per year). The green card lottery, which provides 50,000 immigrant visas per year from countries with a low number of immigrants over the preceding five years, is meant to increase the diversity of countries from which people immigrate. Such country quotas, even if immigrants from each country are accepted on merit rather than luck, diminish the average skill levels from a global total without diversified country quota. A case might be made, however, that America’s interests are served by the good will gained when citizens of a large number of countries have a better chance of immigrating to the United States.

Help those displaced. While increased worker productivity increases our standard of living, it also causes some workers to loose their old jobs and to acquire the new skills needed for the evolving work place. While some of these dislocations come from the competition of global trade, most is the result of improving technologies that increase labor productivity and from changes in consumer tastes. These costs, which fall on a few for the benefit of many, must not be minimized or ignored.

Many of us are no longer such big risk takers as were our ambitious ancestors. We prefer a bit more security at the expense of increases in income. In any event we need to provide an effective and efficient safety net for those of us whose skills are no longer appropriate in the labor market while retraining for the new jobs that replaced the old ones. Very importantly, a public – private partnership should improve the targeting of training of new entrance into the labor force for today’s and tomorrow’s needs and to better support the retraining of those already in the labor force but in no longer needed occupations. This is a reasonable price to pay by the rest of us who benefit from the raising living standards of improving productivity.

Restore the rule of law. There are 11 to 12 million illegal immigrants living in the United States. It is not in our national interest to go on ignoring the law. But it would be devastating to our economy (to the firms that employ them) and to the personal lives and welfare of these people to expel them even if we had the military/police capacity to do so. So the laws defining their status must be changed. There is almost unanimous agreement that the Dreamers (those brought into the country illegally as minors) should be given legal status (permanent residency) but less agreement about citizenship. In my opinion, all illegal immigrants who have been here for more than say five years and have not been convicted of a felony should be granted permanent legal residency. However, to become citizens they should be required to go through the same process and procedures as anyone else applying for citizenship (though from their American residence). https://wcoats.blog/2017/02/12/illegal-aliens/